This invention relates to storage media labels, and more particularly to a coded label that is both machine readable and human readable.
Machine readable bar codes have become commonplace today, virtually every prepackaged food product or household product sold in supermarkets has a bar code printed on its package. The bar codes are read by electronic readers at the checkout counters. This not only speeds the process of customer check-out, but has become a valuable asset in inventory control.
With the advent of automated systems that will retrieve tape cartridges from a library, labels having both a human readable portion, and a machine readable portion, have been adapted for being placed on magnetic tape cartridges. For example, the label of U.S. Pat. No. 4,844,509, issued July 4, 1989 to Kasprzak, et al., is commonly placed on tape cartridges suitable for use in the IBM 3480 Magnetic Tape Subsystem. While this label can be read by some automated tape retrieval systems, the bar code on this label contains a serious drawback for reading by a conventional bar code reader. Conventional bar code readers require a "quiet zone" at each end of the bar code. This quiet zone is a long, light-colored area, approximately the length of two bar code characters. The label of U.S. Pat No. 4,844,509 does not have such a quiet zone, and is therefore difficult to read using conventional bar code readers.
A further problem introduced by the label of this patent, is that the human readable code must be made smaller in order to accommodate the bar code on one side of the label. This makes label reading more difficult if the person reading the label is standing at a distance from the label.
There is need in the art then for a label having a bar code with a quiet zone to allow such a label to be read by a conventional bar code reader. There is further need in the art for such a label to have larger human readable characters that can be read from a greater distance.